Chemically-selective microscopy

Visible light microscopy has become indispensable in today's society. Particularly in industry, medicine and the life sciences, microscopes provide important tools, e.g., for quality control or tissue assessment. The contrast of normal light microscopy often comes down to limits, especially in medical-biological issues, due to the small difference in refractive index between cell components and the surrounding water. Accordingly, alternative contrast methods are needed to obtain more detailed information about the object under investigation. Such contrast methods are disclosed by methods of fluorescence or non-linear microscopy.

The Working Group of Optical Technologies is improving nonlinear microscopy with new laser beam sources and methods, preferably with the use of Raman scattering, which allows a chemically-selective contrast without staining the samples. Both spontaneous and coherent Raman scattering techniques are being further developed to achieve improvements in the spectral or spatial resolution of nonlinear chemically-selective microscopes.